A family friend said Tuesday the late vice president Joseph Msika, who had tried to assist several white farmers since land invasions began in 2000, secured a permit for Joubert to remain in his home and continue farming.

Mike Clark, an official at the Commercial Farmers' Union who monitors unrest on remaining white occupied farms, said he was not sure of the motive of the murder. He said defining the motive for murders on farms had become "a very sensitive matter."

He said Joubert had planted 50 hectares of tobacco, which in these days of reduced production, was a large crop.

The farmers union said that when attackers beat up Joubert's wife Mariana they also took her laptop computer accusing her family of being members of prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change, now in a difficult inclusive government with Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.

Even though the heat of land invasions eased in the last five years, scores of white farmers and their workers have been injured, invaded, robbed and evicted.